


A Conversation

by Asterrious



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Sick Eddie, a conversation i wanted to write that kind of came out, dying carlton, sillier than i wanted it to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 13:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16556687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asterrious/pseuds/Asterrious
Summary: Drake's not dead, but he's almost there. Before he dies, he wants to talk to Venom.





	A Conversation

**Author's Note:**

> featuring: venom reading 'go the fuck to sleep' to eddie in the form of brain chemicals
> 
> this is like. half-serious. its kind of dumb. but i enjoy it. not in the same universe as my other fic.

Carlton Drake supposed he was alive. He didn’t feel like it though- didn’t feel anything but the bandaged burns dotting his arms and the several cracked ribs the doctor had said he needed to baby. They wanted him to stay in his private hospital room, where they could hover anxiously around him while his vitals continued to decrease. Like he’d have listened to them anyway, when they were all afraid to tell him the true extent of his injuries. Not one of them had wanted to detail exactly was broken in his system, and how it could never be repaired.

Riot had eaten a lot of his body, trying to heal the damage from the explosion. The symbiote had failed, of course, but the bite marks in his liver, his pancreas, were all the evidence he’d existed at all. Drake was on borrowed time, every step lent to him by the multiple blood transfusions and surgeries that had even gotten him to this point.

Standing in front of a dingy apartment block, leaning heavily on a cane and squinting at the paper in his hand to make sure he had the right place.  
He wasn’t fucking sure Eddie Brock understood the gift he’d been given. That Drake had placed in his ungrateful, shabby, impulsive lap. With the symbiote’s power- Venom, Riot had called it- he could have everything in the world he wanted. Endless riches to outmatch Drake’s, nations kneeling at his feet. And here he was, still living in the same shitty place he’d always been.

It seemed like fate’s cruel joke, that Brock should be the one to transcend humanity. That Brock, a degenerate, idiotic, disaster of a man would be the only fucking person on the planet that would get to experience any of it.

Carlton had great difficulty on the stairs, with his cane and the lack of a working elevator. His insides were burning as though he were on fire again by the time he made it up to the fourth floor, sweat pouring down his body from the effort of moving. There was a little alarm going off on the monitoring bracelet strapped to his wrist, the one that told him he needed to get to the hospital right away, the one that meant he was dying even faster because he was pushing himself, but he ignored it. It was easy enough to break the bracelet underfoot to get it to stop its wailing.

Eddie Brock’s door was barely holding upright on its hinges, the work of an amateur who had no idea how to hang a door. He supposed he didn’t have to worry about security anymore.

There wasn’t even a lock on the door. Drake used the edge of his cane on the door, leaning heavily against the wall for support. It creaked open slowly, catching itself after a few seconds on a warped floorboard that stuck out from the rest. Carlton was even thinner than he had been before the entire debacle, but he had to turn slightly sideways to get inside. He couldn’t help but wonder how a man as large as Eddie could get in.

The inside of the apartment was just as disappointing as the outside. Dishes were piled high in the sink, some covered in the slick, slimy film that meant they hadn’t been washed for at least a week or two. A couch covered in stains was resting directly on the floor, only splintery wooden stumps left to indicate it had ever had legs. One of the windows was broken and Brock had covered it with newspapers and stuffed what looked like towels in the cracks along the bottom in an attempt to give the room some insulation. It didn’t work- he could see his breath in the air as he moved, clunking through the tiny space.

It was a miracle Brock hadn’t come charging out with a bat to beat the intruder from his home. Or worse, Venom sneaking out from the bedroom with sharp claws and a monstrous appetite. If they truly hadn’t noticed him yet, this would be his chance. He could turn around, stumble back down the stairs, and walk himself back to the hospital to die. It would certainly be a less painful way to go than at the tips of those pointed teeth and the cruel jagged smile.

But Drake had worked his whole life for this and he- couldn’t. Couldn’t walk away from his last chance to finally, maybe…

He didn’t know. He was walking forward anyway, because he’d never been a man to second guess himself.

There were multiple points of interest in Eddie Brock’s bedroom. A huge, king-sized bed was somehow shoved into a space that very clearly was too small for it. Two of its sides were pressed against the walls and there was barely two feet of space between the edge of the mattress and the remaining walls. Somehow Brock had squeezed a nightstand into the claustrophobic bedroom, clearly strong-arming it to fit. None of the drawers could be opened, but the top of it was littered with objects- two bottles of pills, with the caps discarded on the floor, a box of tissues, and two empty glasses. One looked as though it might have recently held orange juice, and Drake would bet on the reddish substance pooling in the other being cough syrup. He recognized the bottle on the floor as the same brand he used to chug to get through the days a cold had caught him up in its grip.

All of this was secondary to the figure on the bed. Most of the man was cocooned in a thick sheet of blankets, but his face stuck out on the pillow, pale and covered in the same sticky sheen as his dishes. Sweat had soaked through the sweatshirt he wore, and his breathing seemed labored- as though his lungs were clogged.

Instantly images of all the failed test subjects flashed through Drake’s mind. He’d assumed that because they lasted this long, there was no chance of rejection- had he been wrong? Was he watching Eddie Brock in organ failure, watching as he died and the last of the symbiotes was poisoned by the toxic atmosphere?

There was a sick satisfaction in the pit of his stomach at the thought. As much as he hated the thought of his dream for the world dying- at least it wouldn’t be fucking Eddie Brock to carry that which he had no right to. No idea how to use.

Venom was manifested, tendrils spilling across the human’s forehead in a band of dark in that seemed to be continuously flowing over the fevered skin. A lace network of the symbiote was trailing down the side of Brock’s neck, thrumming with every beat of his heart, and the main mass of inky blackness rested on his chest. Venom rose and fell with each labored breath but did not move otherwise, the creature seemingly in some sort of stasis as its host died. Probably trying to conserve its energy, trying to hold them at the edge of life and death long enough to feed again. Find someone else it could latch on to.

Drake watched them for long moments, debating with himself what to do. For all of Eddie’s failures- his shortcomings, the pathetic mess his life had turned out to be- it felt wrong to let him die like this. Perhaps his systems could be stabilized, of Drake got him to a hospital. Perhaps the symbiosis would be corrected, and they could study why it seemed to fall out of place so often. If these creatures were simply not compatible with humans for long, no matter how perfect the match.

The choice was made for him when his cane skidded on the wood. Instantly the black mass pooled on Eddie’s chest bloomed white eyes and a razor smile that fixed on Drake leaning in the doorway. He saw instant recognition in the symbiote’s eyes before they narrowed to slits and it was peeling itself from Brock’s chest like a serpent rising from slumber.

 **“YOU.”** It thundered, voice like a whip-crack.

Drake had never heard Venom before. Riot had whispered in his ears when they were together, and he’d had… snippets of the other symbiote’s voice in his head while they fought, but this was different.

 **“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE.”** The symbiote continued, black mass rippling out to cover Eddie’s body entirely. Strangely it didn’t rise them off the bed to their full eight foot height, seemingly only settled over the human’s skin in a protective layer. He wondered if that was to conserve energy.

“I wasn’t-“

His mind raced. The creature hadn’t immediately killed him, like he’d been half expecting. That was a positive sign. Drake searched for the thing he could say that would lower his threat level in the symbiote’s eyes, anything he could use to convince it not to murder him before he got the chance to… learn? Ask? Maybe save it’s and Brock’s life if it let him?

“Riot’s dead.” Was what he settled on forcing past his clenched teeth, white-knuckling the end of his cane.

 **“So should you be.”** Venom hissed out. Small bits of its face flared and he got the distinct impression that it was smelling him, testing to see if he was telling the truth. Drake wished he could have explored its senses more- had time in the lab to learn what it could see of the world, how it sensed its surroundings with no host to help it along. There were so many things he would do over, if he’d known then what he knew now.

But there was no point in regretting the past.

 **“You smell like death, Drake.”** The symbiote pronounced his name like it were a curse.

“Yes,” He agreed. He’d come to terms with death long ago. It was what had to come before, what he needed to accomplish, what he was destined to do that frightened him.

 **“Good,”** Venom grinned at him like the Cheshire cat. **“Go find a nice ditch to crawl into and die there, not on our floor.”**

‘Our floor.’ Despite the clear breakdown of the symbiosis, Venom was still thinking of them as a pair. Loyal. He knew that was not a trait shared among its species, and a bitter taste arose in the back of his throat.

Carlton Drake was not jealous of Eddie Brock as he lay dying in his bed. He was not a child.

But he wanted. With every fiber of his being, he’d wanted to be more.

Whatever he was going to say next, probably something sharp and witty and cunning that would convince the alien to rip his throat out and get it over with, was interrupted by Brock stirring.

“V?” The man asked aloud, his voice heavy with sleep and clogged airways. “Can you turn down the TV?”

The symbiote immediately turned its attention from Carlton to its host, and he watched as it almost… frowned. As much as it could with the shape of its mouth.

 **“Go back to sleep Eddie.”** It told him, ignoring Drake in the doorway.

Instead, the reporter’s eyes opened and fixed on the figure in their small bedroom. Venom sighed in exasperation, and Carlton was at least gratified to know that Brock could be just as much of an annoyance for others.

“…Don’t think the fever’s going down,” Eddie slurred, watching as the other man stood stock still, afraid to make a move in case he occurred the wrath of the symbiote. “I’m hallucinating. Fuckin’ Drake’s standing over there…”

 **“Don’t be stupid.”** Venom chastised, white eyes sliding around to pin Drake down. Daring him to say anything or make a move. **“Drake’s dead. Go the fuck to sleep.”**

Eddie huffed slightly and shuffled over in bed. Venom, still extended from his body, had to quickly send out tendrils to stabilize itself as its host moved underneath it. It had the expression of a startled cat and Drake had to stifle a bubble of laughter, watching it resettle itself over the human like a grumpy living blanket.

There were several long moments before the creature seemed satisfied that its host had fallen back asleep. It refused to look away from Drake the entire time, waiting until the labored breathing had settled back into something resembling a rest pattern. If this was the shape Brock was in, he wasn’t going to last through the night.

He hadn’t thought the man was as much of an idiot as he apparently was. Trying to medicate multi-system failure with cold medicine and tylenol was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard of. Even Brock should have been able to tell when it was time to go to the hospital.

“…Why haven’t you killed me yet?” Carlton asked, breaking the raspy breath-filled silence. A long tongue slid from between Venom’s teeth and swiped across them, tasting the air. Those eyes narrowed at him, and he was considered in the way a cat considered a cornered mouse.

 **“…Something’s wrong with Eddie.”** The symbiote said eventually. Drake resisted the urge to tell it that was obvious. **“Tell us what it is.”**

“I’m- i’m not a doctor, Venom.” Carlton replied, frowning.

**“You watched other humans melded with our kind. You should know what is happening to us. You would know better than any doctor.”**

The way Venom said ‘doctor’ was the same way it had spat his name, and he got the distinct impression that there had been a bad encounter with one. Perhaps that was why Eddie hadn’t gone to the hospital. Perhaps the symbiote hadn’t let him.

“…May I feel his pulse?” Carlton asked, and Eddie’s limbs flailed themselves under the blankets like a puppet whose puppeteer had suddenly jerked on the strings. Every bit of skin save for his face was suddenly unavailable for Drake, had he been brave enough to reach out and touch the man without Venom’s permission. The symbiote curled its head on the other’s chest, looking rather smug with itself.

Drake took back everything he thought, or wished, or hoped in regards to the black alien watching him. It was just as big of a pain in his ass as Brock himself. They deserved to rot with each other.

“I can’t tell what’s wrong without examining him.” He tried, and was met with a baring of needle-sharp teeth and a snap of Venom’s jaws.

“Fine. Be childish.”

It seemed about to retort, but Carlton plowed through what he was saying regardless.

“You are the most stable pair that we know of. None of the other subjects lasted near as long as you and Brock have. It’s possible that his body is breaking under the strain of hosting you, like the others have.”

Venom hissed in clear displeasure.

**“The others died because they were imperfect matches and you were not feeding us properly. Agony and Lasher had to eat their hosts to survive. We have not touched Eddie’s organs except to fix them.”**

“That may be, but its possible his system is rejecting you like it would reject any foreign body. You are so pervasive in his body, his immune system might be overreacting and attacking itself.”

Venom was silent for a long moment. Then-

**“His immune system _is…_ active.”**

It felt like an admission from the symbiote. Carlton watched the blankets covering Eddie’s form shift, something underneath them sliding up his body. In another moment, a tendril emerged to rest against the pulse point in his neck, fluttering quickly. This time, there was no doubt Venom was monitoring his vitals. 

**“Eddie is dying.”** The symbiote stated, more to itself than Drake. He capitalized on the admission anyway, stumbling forward a bit.

“He doesn’t have to. Let me take you to the hospital, they can stabilize him, we can-“

 **“No hospitals!”** It said, outlining every syllable. 

He made a noise of frustration in the back of his throat. 

“He needs a doctor and medical facilities. I can set you up in a private room, no one will find out.“ 

Drake’s mind was racing, wondering how many people he’d need to pay off to get a wing of the hospital shut down to house Eddie Brock and his symbiote. The labs underneath Life Industries were useless now, which was a pity- it would be inconvenient to keep the secret of the alien contained for however long it took to stabilize the man’s body. 

**“NO.”** A black tendril smacked him into the wall, stopping the train of thought. The slide of symbiote over his flesh brought back the feeling of Riot taking over his body, a puppet master in a way that Drake had refused to acknowledge. He’d been telling himself it was what he wanted, and so it had been. There was no point in thinking over the past.

 **“No hospitals. Eddie doesn’t want a hospital.”** Venom’s voice wavered slightly, caught somewhere between aggravation with its host and deep-worry. It fell silent for a few moments.

**“But… A doctor…?”**

He nodded quickly, wishing he had a hand free so he could reach for his phone. If Venom would allow one of Drake’s doctors to take a look at Eddie, he was sure he could convince the creature to let them fix him up. 

“Yes, let me go and I’ll call the best one I have-“

Venom was already moving though, in the opposite direction of where he had Drake pinned. A tendril grew from Eddie’s shoulder and slinked underneath the bed, rooting around for a few moments before it withdrew a battered-looking cellphone. It brought the screen to its face, white eyes squinting at the brightness. After a few moments of furious button pressing, Drake heard the ringing phone loud and clear in the bedroom. Eddie didn’t even stir.

A woman’s voice, heavy with sleep, answered.

“Eddie? What the fuck?” She asked, and Venom bent its head over the phone.

**“Its Venom.”**

There was dead air for a few moments. Drake wondered exactly how many people Eddie had managed to show off his alien parasite to. 

"Is this a joke?

**"No."**

“…Venom. Okay. We were wondering when Eddie would tell us you were alive.”

**“Eddie is asleep.”**

“Is everything okay?”

**“Eddie’s dying. I need Dan to come and help.”**

It was difficult to imagine what whoever was on the other end of that line was thinking, but Carlton would put good money on them hanging up. Brock seemed like the kind of guy to push a practical joke too far.

“Venom?” She sounded worried now and he could hear rustling and the sound of a deeper voice in the background. “You need to call 911, okay? Get him to the hospital, Dan and I will meet you there!”

 **“No hospitals.”** The symbiote stated simply, as though that were a reasonable thing to say in the situation. 

“Venom, I swear to god if you don’t get him to the hospital this instant I will buy a flamethrower.”

The creature thrashed with anger and Drake could see barely concealed worry, panic, and agony behind its eyes. Its coils slid over themselves restlessly, and he wasn’t sure if the tightening of the tendrils around his shoulders was of its own volition or not. 

It seemed to be losing control of its temper, which meant it was losing control of the situation with Eddie. If he went into system failure now, there would be no saving him.

“I would listen to Venom, miss.” Drake spoke up, practically shouting to make sure he was heard. Eddie rolled in his sleep and he was sure he felt another rib crack as Venom pressed him tighter in retaliation for almost waking its host. 

“…Is that Carlton Drake…?”

He would be smug she knew his voice that well, if he wasn’t sure there was something ruptured inside of him. If he had been on borrowed time when he walked into the apartment earlier, he had only an hour left at most. 

**“Carlton Drake is here,”** Venom chimed in helpfully. It was beginning to lift itself over Brock’s body, gathering over his limbs like a swirling stormcloud. Like if it held itself between him and the rest of the world, it could fix anything wrong with him. 

**“No hospitals Anne.”**

“…Okay. We’re… We’re on the way okay? Ten minutes at most. Don’t let that bastard touch him.”

 **“Never.”** The symbiote promised, and the line went dead. It tossed the phone towards the foot of Eddie’s bed and resumed its angry swirling, what he supposed was its form of pacing. Finally he was released from its grasp and he slid to the floor, unable to support himself over the rush of pain that spread throughout his body with every pulse of his heart. Venom didn’t look at him, fluttering up and down the human on the bed without really stopping anywhere. 

It might have been touching, if he were the type of man to get sentimental. If he were the type to think of such things. It might have been… painful to watch, if he let himself think about the wanting that had started all of this in the first place. 

“When they get here, you should use one of them as a host.” He stated, and was treating to another snap of Venom’s teeth. 

**“Eddie is my host.”**

“He’s dying. You will die if you stay with him.”

**“Eddie won’t die. We’ll keep him alive. Dan will help or we will rip his organs out through his throat.”**

“A single doctor can’t do anything in the face of multi-organ failure.”

**“We will grow him new ones.”**

He huffed, exasperated. They deserved each other, if Venom was going to be so cavalier about its own survival.

“Why stay with him while he dies? Find other hosts for now. If you leave him, he may stabilize. Then you can go back to him.”

**“Other hosts won’t work. Eddie is our only host.”**

“That doesn’t- That doesn’t make sense. Your species is designed to switch hosts. I learned that from Riot. You jump between them. They are interchangeable.”

**“Not to us! Eddie is the only one we want.”**

“You’re-“

His brain couldn’t keep up with his mouth. He was usually more eloquent than this. 

“You’re fucking terrible at being a parasite!”

The moment he realized what he’d said, Drake prepared himself for the inevitable crushing crunch of teeth through bone and the pain that would follow. Venom was volatile and impulsive, like Brock himself- there was no way it would let Drake live through insulting it like that. 

Moment after moment passed without the pin-prick of those horrifying teeth. One eye opened to see the symbiote watching him with an inscrutable expression. How the thing managed to convey emotions, giving the fact it was simply eyes and a mouth, was beyond him. If he had to guess, he’d say it looked proud. 

**“Yes we are.”**

They were saved from further conversation by the sound of the apartment’s front door bursting open. Rapid footsteps crossed the warped floorboards and then a man wearing a white coat over a pair of pajamas rushed into the room, followed by a woman carrying what looked like a fully-stocked first aid kit. 

The doctor bypassed Drake on the floor completely, immediately heading to Eddie’s side. Venom skillfully untwisted the man’s body from the bundle of blankets, revealing his pale, clammy skin and the sweat pouring off of him in rivulets. Already wearing a pair of gloves, the man reached out to press his fingers to Eddie’s pulse, looking at Venom’s head so close to him without fear. Definitely not their first meeting. 

“What happened?” He asked as the woman, presumably Anne, opened the kit and placed it on the bed next to him. 

**“Immune system started attacking his body,”** Venom murmured mournfully, keeping its tendrils out of the way as Dan pressed his stethoscope to Eddie’s chest. Drake wondered what that sounded like- if he could hear the whoosh of symbiote through his veins along with the blood. 

**“Its hard to breathe. And he’s too hot, we can’t cool him down.”**

The doctor listened for a moment, and Carlton saw a frown cross his face. Anne seemed to finally notice him, slumped on the floor, though he was unsure how she could have missed him given the size of Brock’s bedroom. She crossed her arms over her chest, seemingly torn between beating the shit out of him and watching what Dan was doing over Eddie. 

“How long has he been like this?” Dan asked, grabbing a penlight. He reached forward to lift Eddie’s eyelids and was startled when the eye underneath moved to him. The human lying on the bed cursed, jolting awake, and Venom swarmed its entire mass around him like a blanket to keep him from shaking Dan off.

“V, what’s… What’s going on?” He asked in a deep rasp. After another second, the light seemed to come on in his mind, Brock seemingly more and more aware of the fact that there were three people standing in his bedroom. One of them had a penlight pointed in his face. Dan gaped at him, looked at Venom, and then at Anne, as if trying to find an explanation. Drake himself had none- Eddie shouldn’t have been able to respond to any stimuli, let alone form coherent, rational questions. 

**“You’re hallucinating Eddie,”** The symbiote helpfully supplied, probably since the man had accepted that explanation so easily the first time. This time however, it didn’t seem as though the reporter would be so easily calmed. 

“Dan? Anne? What are you doing here, what-“

He caught sight of the first aid kit laid open on his sheets. Understanding bloomed across his face.

“Did Venom- _V, jesus fucking christ, I told you, I have-“_

Brock never got to finish his sentence. They all watched as his eyes rolled back in his head and he suddenly collapsed back onto the sheets like a puppet with its strings cut. Dan rushed forward, seemingly ready to help once more, but he was met with a wall of black flesh. Venom was wiggling over its host, stroking and soothing.

**“We put him to sleep, didn’t want him to be mad, he said-“**

A rattling drew all of their attention. Anne was standing by the nightstand, holding a bottle of Tylenol in her hand. Dan glanced at her and zeroed in on the Tylenol, noticing the cough syrup on the ground. 

It seemed they all realized what had happened in the same moment.

“…Did… Do you know what a cold is, Venom?” Dan asked, barely concealing relieved laughter behind the words. 

**“Its what Eddie said he had before he went to bed. But he was warm. Too warm.”**

Drake felt his eyes go wider than he ever thought they could. Before he could think of anything to say, the bottle of pills Anne had been holding hit him in the side of the head with a crack. Her face was completely livid, brilliantly red with an anger that he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt. 

“Okay,” Dan said, trying to step between her and Carlton. He found a bit of appreciation in him for the man. “A cold is no big deal. Eddie probably told you about it when he felt he was getting sick. Why did you think he was dying?”

Venom stabbed a tendril towards Drake, and the man’s blood ran cold in his veins.

**“He told us. Said that Eddie’s body was rejecting us. Immune reaction was proof.”**

“And you just believed him?” Anne shrieked, throwing her hands into the air. The doctor narrowly sidestepped being slapped in the face. It was Venom turn to shrink as they receded a bit into Eddie’s body, the giant mass of their face condensing into something resembling a thin snake. 

“You are literally! In Eddie’s body! Venom!”

Carlton Drake was quite sure he was going to need a hospital soon. If he cared about his own life, he’d have been glad there was a doctor in the room. Everything was starting to go a bit black around the edges, hazy. His chest ached like Venom was still there, like Riot was still there, crushing him from the outside in and the inside out at once. 

He was pretty sure he was never going to get as far as the hospital though. Either Venom would eat him for the panic he’d caused, the woman would decide to murder him herself, or he’d die of fucking shame for misdiagnosing a cold.

**Author's Note:**

> i bet eddie has fun mornings and not so fun mornings.


End file.
